the first gleam of a hostile bayonet upon the shores of England, you would get you up, man, woman, and child, to hurl its bearer back again. When, my friends, you can find a great thought, powerful enough to dull the sword, and turn aside the balls and bombs of the cannon and the mortar-when a protest from some Kossuth of freedom is strong enough to convert an invading army of Croats and Cossacks into a herd of timorous, cowering men-when the appeals of a Mazzini, and the proclamations of a Manin can set free Rome, and give back her independent life to Venice-when you can point out to me any step in advance made by the peoples against the sharp steel and brute force of infallible authority-except by the same kind of steel in the hands of enlightened free-born men-then I will consent to say with you that peace doctrines shall be the only engines of propagandism, and peace policy the only policy of progress.

October 31, 1849.

WILLIAM LONGBEARD.

REDEMPTION SOCIETY-CURIOUS REPORT.

[THE following letter was addressed to the chairman of the recent public meeting at the City Road, and read by him. It illustrates the strange combination of the practical and the enthusiastic, which has just excited the wonder of the North British Review.-ED.]

DEAR SIR,-I am glad you are making a move again. I cannot but think if a few of you London people would follow our example of collecting, you would make more progress. I hope you will press this on the meeting. Though our progress is slow it is positive and sound, and will never know ebb. Mr. Denton has gone to the estate and reports favourably. They are sowing wheat and getting the potatoes-in fact they will have finished the last job by this time. Mr. Denton says they are much finer than was expected. We may state things are going on very satisfactorily, though we are still in want of more agricultural labour. We are sadly in want of an efficient housekeeper, with Yorkshire knowledge of cooking, and dairy. We are entering upon a business which I expect will have a great effect upon our progress in Leeds. We have had two firkins of butter from Wales, and have been able to sell it one penny and twopence a pound under the market price, quality considered, to our members here. We have another firkin coming to-morrow, which will shortly be disposed of-this leaves a profit of a penny a pound to the society, after thus conferring a benefit upon the members. Next week we have a killed-ox coming, from this we shall also reap a profit and sell it cheap. We are about, in short, to supply our members with all they use, as we find it to answer. As soon as we get fairly masters of the traffic here in Leeds we shall seek to extend it to the Branches, and, by and by, we shall become a great merchant body, buying where we can, but selling only to the members. We shall neither counsel nor take hasty steps in this matter, but slowly and cautiously develop the practicability of the idea. I am also happy to inform you the adhesion of Mr. Benjamin Glover, one of the most talented lecturers of the Temperance Society in Lancashire and the north, is likely to produce great fruits to our cause. Of the adhesion of Dr. Lees and

Mr. Greig the latter one of the talented lecturers of the Anti-Corn Law League-they are calculated to influence large bodies of people. Dr. Lees is in Jersey at present; you should make arrangements for his lecturing in London, on his return in February or March. The next Tribune will contain a suggestion that a halfpenny per month be collected from the members, towards a propagandist fund-much good might be done by this. There is one thing we in Leeds are certain of, and that is, success, -this faith sustains us, and will enable us to succeed. What a man believes in he may labour for, but without faith no man can work; have faith then, like us, and you shall share the glory of establishing the New Age. We no more doubt the Redemption Society will be the instrument than we doubt our own existence; and hence we labour not for a month, a year, or a cycle, but till we have conquered. Capital is power. We are richer this than we were last week, and shall be richer next week than this. Wealth may flow into our coffers but we have stopped the way out. Here our wealth and power is like money at compound interest, its capacity to grow increases by its every action. People lacking faith may halt in their course, but when their faith reawakens they will always, as they have hitherto done, find us further on in our journey. If old friends forsake us in disdain at the slowness of our progress, still we pause not; others may step into the shade and doubt, but we, like Old Time, still plod on-still, like the snowball, gathering bulk, until we become an established Fact-then a great Fact-until at last the new idea of social brotherhood, backed by a successful experiment, shall win the applause and imitation of all good men.

MAZZINI.

DAVID GREEN.

No. 15 of the New York Spirit of the Age, a weekly Associationist paper, edited by W. H. Channing, has the following details on Mazzini, from the letter of a friend who was in Rome during the heroic struggle of the Republic.'

'I did not see Mazzini, during the last two weeks of the contest. When the French entered, he walked about the streets to see how the People bore themselves; and then went to the house of a friend. In the fifth story of a poor house, with his life-long friends, the Modenas, I found him-Modena, who with a wife every way worthy of him, had abandoned not only what other men hold dear-home, fortune, friends, peace-but had also remained without the power of using the prime of his artist's talent in a ten years' exile from his native land.

'Mazzini had plainly suffered most deeply. He had borne his fearful responsibilities, he had seen his dearest friends perish, he had passed those terrible nights and days without sleep; in two short months he had grown old, the vital forces seemed exhausted, his eyes were bloodshot, his skin orange, flesh he had none, his dark hair was mixed with white, his hand was painfully hot to the touch; but he had never quailed, never flinched for an instant; in the very last hour he had protested against surrender, sweet and calm, but full of a more fiery purpose than ever! In him I saw and revered a Hero.'

Ο

CLUB-HOUSES FOR THE WORKING CLASSES.

A movement is now being made amongst the working classes of the metropolis for the erection and establishment of houses which shall combine the advantages of a lodging house and club-house, and shall also be adapted by individuals for the purposes of their respective trades, when practicable.-Daily Paper.

WHY should not such houses be built for families in flats? They would pay any builder well. It is the only way in which the advantages of cooperation will be easily taught to society. If excellent buildings were erected so that self-contained portions could be let off, we are satisfied that the property would become very valuable, from their greater convenience and safety. Many convenient arrangements would naturally arise out of the circumstance of there being large rooms for the common use. Friendly intimacies and goodwill would arise from frequently meeting at the same places, and the knowledge of each other that would thence arise. The great change which has taken place in the habits of the people within the last half-century is shown by the great increase of coffee houses and coffee shops, of respectable lodging and boarding houses, and of family hotels, within the metropolis and large towns. If, under their own roof, the heads of families could enjoy, with their grown-up families, the advantages of a common coffee and reading room, or a dance or lectures when they felt so inclined, it is easy to see how the presence of the accommodations would lead to these unions and reunions. The instances of neglect of families and drunkenness are mostly occasioned by the absence of comfort in the homes-if cellars and single rooms, and eight or ten persons sleeping in one room, can with propriety be called homes. If some twenty heads of families, who could each put down £250, would unite in so doing, and would agree to take and occupy a proportionate number of rooms in a building for a given time, they might easily put this movement into action by arranging with some builder, and show, by a middle-class combination of this kind, what might be done upon scales and plans suited to superior and inferior incomes. The present Model Lodging Houses are good examples. Plans and estimates might be easily obtained.

THE ELECTION LISTS IN ENGLAND.

S.

THE revising barristers are about concluding their duties [written a fortnight ago]; the operation of the reform bill is to disfranchise all, and then, at an enormous expense, to enfranchise about one out of every eight, and the seven who are debared by the act are made to bear the expense of unfranchising the eight. The expense of doing this injustice is enormous. If men and women carried their titles to vote-as in justice they should do by the mere fact of their having arrived at maturity; and the elections were taken in one day, the expense would be comparatively trifling, and the possibility of committing any serious fraud on the result by voting at more places than one would hardly exist. By the present system a man, if he chooses to buy a forty shilling freehold qualification, may have as many votes as there are counties.

S.

CHARLOTTE HARRIS.

THE following Petition was drawn up and signed at the Reasoner Office:

To Queen Victoria.

The petition of the undersigned Women of England sheweth-That in the opinion of your Majesty's petitioners, the hanging of women is calculated to produce moral effects the contrary of those designed by the law, and the practice ought to be continued no longer.

That in the case of Charlotte Harris, lying in Taunton Gaol for the murder of her husband, the peculiar circumstances connected with that unhappy event, and the agony she has since been made to suffer in awaiting childbirth and hanging, warrant a commutation of her sentence.

Your petitioners, therefore, earnestly pray your Majesty to consider the case of this unhappy woman, and mercifully grant a commutation of her sentence.

THE CONDITIONS OF PATRIOTISM.

Ilecker, the Baden Republican leader, on his departure for America, writes thus to a friend :-'It is with a bitter feeling I cancel twelve years of honest and unceasing exertions and struggles from the tablets of my life, and at thirty-eight begin a new career in the narrow circle of a farmer of the Western States......I am so wretchedly weary of this empty conflict.... My account with the Old World is closed.'

Didst thou bargain then for honour, when thou chosest Virtue's side?

Didst make terms with Self for Fortune, now to turn dissatisfied?

Or didst think the goal so easy, distant but one giant stride?

'Twelve long years,' a life's poor fraction! Is the whole of so much heed,
Thou wilt not give all for Freedom, though thy days be scattered seed,
To be trampled, ne'er so vilely, for the Future's harvest-need?

Is it then so strange a pulpit, from the Cross thou would'st not speak?
Do the whole need a physician, thou would'st leave the sick and weak?
Is it not a change from evil the Reformer dares to seek?

Truly, vileness doth preponderate; sloth and sordidness abound;
Rascal treasons, worst suspicions, ever crawl our footsteps round;
'Twas because of this, Endeavour with a prophecy was crowned.

With the faith-'the right must conquer!' little matters count of time;
Though God's earth seem but one grave-stone, hidden by the ages' slime:
Yet the Holy Resurrection shall uplift its front sublime.

Wherefore tell us, mouth-heroic, of the vileness of the herd?
Shall the Few brave men esteem thee idle as a broken word?
Kossuth and Mazzini living, and thou-by despair interr'd?

Thy 'good name!' Have none before thee trod Truth's ignominious road?
Art thou first-call'd of earth's 'Felons,' to be lone in thy abode,
Though what mortals call' Oblivion' over that word ' Hecker' flow'd?

Slander, doubt, and disappointment, and accusal, even from friends;
Cowardice from those who aided only for some lower ends!
Will thy cowardly desertion for their baseness make amends?

Blaming lack of iron will' in others, and thy welded soul
Breaks, because the weak have falter'd! Let thy juster passion roll

Back on thine own stranded courage; float thee once more tour'd the goal! SPARTACUS.

Ellustrative Notices.

THE North British Mail, No. 194, has an article upon Mr. W. J. Fox, M.P., which exhibits as much ignorance of his life as of his principles. We need not combat the political animus of the article, as no one in England is accustomed to be addressed with such inanities. It makes one curious statement in asserting that if Mr. Fox confined himself to the precepts of religion, his exhortations would never have travelled beyond the small congregations whom he tries to enlighten.' We suppose this means that religion is utterly without public interest. In this article Mr. Fox, who has been more than a quarter of a century the lecturer at South Flace, is spoken of as having lately' been playing a part there. But the writer is a little antedeluvian in his notions, and it would seem that he belongs bodily to that period, as twenty or thirty years are to him but as 'lately.' The point of offence seems to be that of Mr. Fox delivering his late oration on behalf of the Funds of the Roman Refugees on a Sunday. We thought that even in Scotland it was lawful to do good on the Sabbath day.

John Savage, late of 34, Crawford Street, formerly a vestryman of this parish. The Guardian of the Poor died October 21, 1848; aged 51 years

He whom the frowns of power could not enslave

Can never die-he lives in deathless fame.

And though his ashes fill a silent grave,
Humanity will still revere his name.

His works remain to bloom in after time,

Still forwarding the cause for which he strove—
Still journeying onward in the course sublime—
Still bearing fruits of universal love.

Buried in St. John's Wood burial-ground, on Sunday, 29th October, 1848, without clerical intervention. The stone, bearing the above inscription, was raised on the spot, on Saturday, 27th October, 1849.

6

In a letter which Mr. Southwell has addressed to the editor of the Manchester Spectator, in reference to the public meetings which he has attended in that town, Mr. Southwell states that the meetings were distinctly and unequivocally announced as public. Nothing appeared to warrant the conclusion that only Wesleyans were called upon to attend, or that only Wesleyans would be permitted to speak.' He admits that had any intimation of that kind been given, his appearance there would have been impertinent, and the attempt to speak an insolent tyranny.' He further alleges that had an appeal been made to the meeting, and they had unequivocally decided against his being heard, their decision would have been considered as final, and he should have quietly resumed his seat or as quietly retired.' These representations are unexceptionable, and we readily quote them as they render our readers able to understand Mr. Southwell's views.

The friends of free-inquiry are informed that a capacious building has been secured in the vicinity of Hackney Road, which, when the alterations and additions are effected, will include a Lecture Hall, with detached Coffee and Reading Rooms. The necessary alterations are being effected by friends gratuitously. Mrs. S. Carlile will be the resident directress. Mr. Thomas Cooper has consented to lecture in aid of the funds of the embryo institution, and all who wish to forward the work are informed that assistance and co-operation will be gladly received at the Institution, No. 1, Warner Place, Hackney Road.

Mr. Whitaker writes I will trouble you to correct an error or two you have fallen into respecting the affairs of my friend the late Mr. C. J. Jenkins. His Will did not cost ( an immense sum.' With respect to the Institution-Mr. Jenkins abominated anything approaching sectarianism, and his Will is that the Institution be called "Jenkins' Institution; and open to all classes, without distinction as to country or colour, and irrespective of their religious or political tenets." It is my intention, as soon as matters are more matured, to send you for publication the full particulars of the bequest.' [We shall be indebted to Mr. W. by his promised communication.]

G. J. H.